12/14/14 Features

11/21/14 Albums

There are conversations meant solely for the ears of those involved, full of jocular camaraderie and inside references. And then there are those designed to be overheard, where the dialogue is meant to engage and enlighten anyone who is listening in as well...

11/01/14 Features

10/05/14 Albums

Ambitious, dense and daunting, Chicago flutist-composer Nicole Mitchell’s Intergalactic Beings is a suite of darkly cinematic music inspired by the work of African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler. The forbidding sounds conjured by Mitchell’s...

09/15/14 Albums

Born in Cuba and classically trained, pianist Elio Villafranca has long offered a unique take on Latin jazz, foregoing the reliance on percussion pyrotechnics for a more fully integrated blend of his varied interests. That’s not to say that he can’t bring...

09/13/14 Albums

Too often, when a jazz composer draws upon a specific conceptual inspiration, the link between that source and the music itself seems tenuous at best, impossible to determine without the aid of copious liner notes. But slipping David Ullmann’s Corduroy into...

09/04/14 Concerts

09/01/14 Albums

For more than 20 years, Medeski Martin and Wood have thrived on remaining indefinable. Are they a jam band with jazz chops? A jazz trio following a groove-rock muse? An avant-garde soul-jazz band? That very malleability has meant that their sound is compatible...

08/05/14 Features

07/07/14 Albums

For all the devastation left in its wake, Hurricane Sandy fortunately didn’t leave New York City a total wasteland. But given the metropolis’ usual vibrant bustle, it certainly must have felt that way as residents abandoned their homes and power outages...

06/25/14 Albums

On the eve of his 80th birthday and less than a year after the death of his wife, singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, South African piano great Abdullah Ibrahim has released his starkest, most reflective collection to date. Mukashi is a Japanese word that translates...